Chapter eight

(1)

Soon after her marriage, when they all moved to the nearby city of Lancaster, Dorothy discovered that Chalmer was unusually strict with the four children. No talking at the dinner table. No laughing. The salt had to be passed clockwise. When company came, the children had to sit up straight, feet flat on the floor, hands on their knees.

Kathy was not allowed to sit on her mothers lap. “You’re too old for that, ” Chalmer said to the seven-year-old.

Once when Jimbo asked Billy to pass the salt, and Billy, unable to reach that far, slid it over partway, Chalmer shouted at him, “Can’t you do anything right? Nine years old, acting like a baby.”

They became afraid of Daddy Chal. It was even worse when he was drinking beer.

Afraid to show his anger, Billy withdrew into himself. He didn’t understand the strictness, the hostility, the punishment. Once when Chalmer shouted at him and Billy looked directly into his face, Chalmers tone changed to an icy hiss: “Bend them eyes while I’m talkin’ to you.”

The voice made Billy cringe and look down...

Often when Shawn opened his eyes and looked around, someone was watching him with lips moving, face angry. Sometimes it was the pretty lady. Sometimes it was one of the girls or the boy, who was a little bigger than he was, who would push him or take his toy away. When they moved their lips, he moved his, too, and made the buzzing through his teeth. Then they would laugh when he did that. But not the big angry man. The man would glare at him. Then Shawn would cry, and that would make a funny feeling in his head, too, and Shawn would close his eyes and go away.

Kathy later remembered Billy’s favorite childhood game.

“Do the bee, Billy, ” Kathy said. “Show Challa.”

Billy looked at them, puzzled. “What bee? ”

“The bee thingie you do. You know. Zzzzzzzz! ”

Puzzled, Billy imitated the buzzing of a bee.

“You’re funny, ” Kathy said.

“Why do you make that buzzing sound at night? ” Jimbo asked later in their room. They slept in the antique wooden double bed together, and Jimbo had been awakened several times by his brother making the vibrating buzzing sound.

Embarrassed that Jimbo should mention the buzzing, just as the girls had, which Billy knew nothing about, he thought quickly. “It’s a game I invented.”

“What kind of game? ”

“It’s called ‘Little Bee.’ I’ll show you.” He put both hands under the covers and moved them in circles. “Zzzzzzzz... You see, that’s a family of bees under there.”

To Jimbo, it was almost as if the buzzing sound was coming from under the covers. Billy brought one hand out, cupped, and it seemed the buzzing was coming from inside his hand. Then with his fingers he walked the bee up and down the pillow and the covers. He did this several times with different bees until suddenly Jimbo felt a sharp pinch on his arm.

“Ow! What’d you do that for? ”

“That was one of the bees stung you. Now you gotta catch it. Smack that bee or hold it down with your hand.”

Several times Jimbo slapped or trapped a bee that stung him. Then once, as he trapped one, the buzzing filled the darkened room, became louder and angrier, and the other hand came out and pinched him harder and harder.

“Ow! Ow! Hey, you’re hurting me.”

“It’s not me, ” Billy said. “You trapped Little Bee. His daddy and his big brother came buzzing around to punish you.” Jimbo let go of Little Bee, and Billy had the whole family of bees circling around Little Bee on the pillow.

“That’s a good game, ” Jimbo said. “Let’s play it again tomorrow night.”

Billy lay there in the dark before falling asleep, thinking that was probably the real explanation for the buzzing. He had probably been inventing the game in his head—making the buzzing sounds without realizing the others in the house could hear him. That probably happened to a lot of people. Just like losing time. He figured everybody lost time. He’d often heard his mother or one of the neighbors say, “God, I don’t know where the time went” or “Is it that late? ” or “Where on earth did the day go? ”

(2)

The Teacher remembered one Sunday vividly. It was a week after April Fool’s Day. Billy, who had turned nine seven weeks earlier, had noticed Daddy Chal watching him constantly. Billy picked up a magazine and glanced through it, but when he looked up he saw Chalmer staring, sitting stone-faced with his hand to his chin, his empty blue-green eyes watching everything he did. Billy got up, put the magazine neatly back on the coffee table and sat on the couch the way he’d been told to, feet flat on the floor, hands on his knees. But Chalmer kept looking at him, so he got up and went out on the back porch. Restless, not knowing what to do, he thought of playing with Blackjack. Everyone said Blackjack was a vicious dog, but Billy got along with him. When he looked up, he saw Chalmer staring at him through the bathroom window.

Frightened now, wanting to get away from Chalmers gaze, he went around the house to the front yard and sat there shivering although it was a warm evening. The paper boy tossed the Gazette to him, and he got up and turned to bring it into the house, but there was Chalmer watching him through the front window.

All the rest of that Sunday and that evening, Billy felt Chalmers eyes boring into him. He began to tremble, not knowing what Chalmer was going to do. Chalmer didn’t say anything, didn’t speak, but the eyes were there, following every move.

The family watched Walt Disney s Wonderful World of Color, and Billy stretched out on the floor. From time to time, he would look back and see Chalmers cold, empty stare. When he moved to sit close to his mother on the couch, Chalmer got up and stomped out of the room.

Billy couldn’t sleep much that night.

Next morning, before breakfast, Chalmer came into the kitchen, looking as if he hadn’t slept much either, and announced that he and Billy were going to the farm. There was a lot to be done.

Chalmer drove the back way, the long way, to the farm, never speaking a word the whole trip. He opened the garage and drove the tractor into the bam. Then Billy closed his eyes. He felt pain...

Dr. George Hardings statement to the court recounts the event: “The patient reports... that he suffered sadistic and sexual abuse including anal intercourse from Mr. Milligan. According to the patient this occurred when he was eight or nine over the course of a year, generally on a farm when he would be alone with his stepfather. He indicates that he was afraid that the stepfather would kill him insomuch as he threatened to ‘bury him in the bam and tell the mother that he had run away.’”

... at that moment his mind, his emotions and his soul shattered into twenty-four parts.

(3)

Kathy, Jimbo and Challa later confirmed the Teachers memory of their mothers first beating. According to Dorothy, Chalmer had become enraged after he saw her talking to a black coworker on the job at a nearby bench. She had been operating a tape-controlled punch drill, and when she noticed the man was starting to doze on the assembly line, she went over, shook him and told him it was dangerous. He smiled and thanked her.

As she went back to her work table, she saw Chalmer glaring at her. All the way home he was silent, sulking.

In the house she finally said to him, “Whats the matter? You want to talk about it? ”

“You and that nigger, ” Chalmer said. “What’s going on? ”

“Going on? What in God’s name are you talking about? ”

He hit her. The children watched from the living room as he beat her. Billy stood there, terrified, wanting to help her, wanting to stop Chalmer from hurting his mother. But he smelled the liquor and he was afraid Chalmer would kill him and bury him and tell her he ran away.

Billy ran to his room, slammed the door shut with his back against it and covered his ears with his hands. But he couldn’t shut out his mothers screaming. Crying, he slowly slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor. He closed his eyes tight, and in Shawn’s deafness everything went silent...

That was the first of the bad mix-up times, the Teacher recalled. Life became tangled as Billy wandered about, losing time, not knowing the day or week or month. His fourth-grade teachers noticed his odd behavior, and when one of the personalities, not knowing what was going on, would say something strange or get up and wander around the room, Billy would be sent to stand in the comer. Three-year-old Christene was the one who kept her face to the wall.

She could stay there for a long time and not say anything, keeping Billy out of trouble. Mark, who had a short attention span for anything but manual labor, would have wandered away. Tommy would have rebelled. David would have suffered. “Jason, ” the pressure valve, would have screamed. “Bobby” would have gotten lost in a fantasy. “Samuel, ” who was Jewish, like Johnny Morrison, would have prayed. Any one of them or the others might have done something wrong and gotten Billy into a worse mess. Only Christene, who never got older than three, could stand there patiently and say nothing.

Christene was the comer child.

She was also the first to hear one of the others. She was on the way to school one morning and stopped to pick a bunch of wildflowers in the field. She found sumac and mulberries and tried to put them into a bunch. If she brought them to her fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Roth, maybe she wouldn’t be put in the comer so much. When she passed the apple tree, she decided to bring a fruit instead. She threw away the wildflowers and tried to reach the apples. She felt sad they were too high, and tears came to her eyes.

“Vat is wrong, little girl? Vat for you are crying? ”

She looked around but didn’t see anyone. “The tree won’t let me have the apples, ” she said.

“Don’t cry. Ragen gets apples.”

He shimmied up the tree, and summoning all his strength, “Ragen” broke a thick branch and brought it down. “Here, ” he said. “I have for you many apples.” He loaded his arms with apples and led Christene toward the school.

When Ragen left, Christene dropped them in the middle of the street. A car was speeding toward the biggest, shiniest apple, the one she wanted to give Mrs. Roth, and when she tried to reach it, Ragen bumped her out of the way to save her from being hit. She saw the car had squashed the pretty apple, and she cried, but Ragen picked up another one, not nearly as nice, wiped it off and gave it to her to take to school.

When she put the apple on the desk, Mrs. Roth said, “Why, thank you, Billy.”

That upset Christene, because she had brought the apple. She went to the back of the room, wondering where to sit. She sat down on the left side of the room, but a few minutes later a big boy said, “Get outta my seat.”

She felt bad, but when she sensed Ragen coming to hit the boy, she got up quickly and walked to another chair.

“Hey, that’s my seat, ” a girl called from the blackboard. “Billy’s sitting in my seat.”

“Don’t you know where you sit? ” Mrs. Roth asked. Christene shook her head.

Mrs. Roth pointed to an empty seat on the right side of the room. “You sit in that chair right there, Billy. Now go to it.” Christene didn’t know why Mrs. Roth was angry. She had tried so hard to make the teacher like her. Through her tears she felt Ragen coming out to do something bad to the teacher. So she squeezed her eyes shut, stamped her feet and made Ragen stop. Then she left too.

Billy opened his eyes, looked around, dazed, to find himself in class. God, how had he gotten here? Why were they staring at him? Why were they giggling?

On the way out of class, he heard Mrs. Roth call to him, “Thank you for the apple, Billy. It was very nice of you. I'm really sorry I had to scold you.”

He watched as she went down the corridor, and wondered what in the world she was talking about.

(4)

The first time Kathy and Jimbo heard the British accent, they thought Billy was clowning. Jimbo was in the room with him while they were sorting their laundry. Kathy came to the door to see if Billy was ready to walk with her and Challa to school.

“What’s the matter, Billy? ” she asked, seeing the dazed look on his face.

He looked at her, around the room and at the other boy, who was staring at him too. He had no idea who these two were or how or why he was here. He didn’t know anyone named Billy.

All he knew was that his name was Arthur and he was from London.

He looked down and saw the socks he was wearing, one black and the other purple. “Oh, I say, these are most certainly not mates.”

The girl giggled and so did the boy. “Oh, you’re silly, Billy. That’s good. You sound just like Dr. Watson on those Sherlock Holmes movies you’re always watching, doesn’t he, Jimbo? ” Then she skipped off, and the boy called Jimbo ran out, shouting, “Better hurry up or you’ll be late.”

Why, he wondered, were they calling him Billy when his name was Arthur?

Was he an impostor? Had he come into this house among these people as a spy? A detective? It would take some logical thinking to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Why was he wearing two different-color socks? Who had put them on? What was going on here?

“You coming, Billy? You know what Daddy Chal will do if you’re late again.”

Arthur decided that if he was going to be an impostor, he might as well go all the way. He joined Challa and Kathy on their walk to the Nicholas Drive school, but he said nothing all the way there. When they passed a room, Kathy said, “Where you going, Billy? You’d better get in there.”

He hung back until he could figure out—by the last empty seat—where it would be safe to sit. He walked to it without looking right or left, holding his head high, not daring to speak; he had figured out that the others had laughed because he spoke differently.

The teacher handed out the mimeographed arithmetic test. “When you’re done, ” she said, “you may leave your papers in your books and go out to recess. After you come back, check your answers. Then I’ll collect the papers and grade them.” Arthur looked at the test and sneered at the multiplication and long-division problems. He picked up a pencil and quickly went down the paper, doing the problems in his head and writing in the answers. When he was done, he put the paper into the book, crossed his arms and stared into space.

This was all so very elementary.

Out in the schoolyard the rowdy children annoyed him, and he closed his eyes...

After recess the teacher said, “Take your papers out of your books now.”

Billy looked up, startled.

What was he doing in class? How had he gotten here? He remembered getting up in the morning, but not getting dressed or coming to school. He had no idea what had happened between waking up at home and now.

“You may check your answers before turning in the math papers.”

What math papers?

He had no idea what was going on, but he decided if she asked him why he didn’t have his math, he’d tell her he forgot it or lost it outside. He’d have to tell her something. He opened his book and stared in disbelief. There was the test paper with all the answers written in—to all fifty problems. He noticed that it wasn’t his handwriting—similar, but as if it had been written very quickly. He’d often found papers in his possession and just assumed they were his. But he knew there was no way in the world someone as bad as he was in math could have done those problems. He peeked over at the desk next to his and saw a girl working on the same test. He shrugged, picked up a pencil and wrote “Bill Milligan” at the top. He had no intention of checking it. How could he doublecheck the answers if he didn’t know how to work the problems?

“Are you finished already? ”

He looked up and saw the teacher standing over him.

“Yeah.”

“You mean you didn’t check your answers? ”

“Nope.”

“Do you have that much confidence you’re going to pass this test? ”

“I dunno, ” Billy said. “Only way to find out is to grade it.”

She took the test paper up to her desk, and a few seconds later he saw the frown on her face. She walked back to his seat. “Let me see your book, Billy.”

He handed it to her and she leafed through it.

“Let me see your hands.”

He showed her his hands. Then she asked to see his shirt cuffs and the contents of his pockets and the inside of his desk.

“Well, ” she said finally, “I don’t understand. There’s no way you could have the answers, because I just ran the test off on the mimeograph this morning and the only answers are in my purse.”

“Did I pass? ” Billy asked.

She gave him back his paper reluctantly. “You got a perfect score.”

Billy’s teachers called him truant, troublemaker, liar. From fourth to eighth grade, he was in and out of offices of advisers, the principal, the school psychologist. Growing up was a constant battle of making up stories, bending the truth, manipulating explanations to avoid admitting that most of the time he didn’t know what had happened to him days, hours, even just minutes ago. Everyone noticed his trances. Everyone said he was strange.

When he came to understand that he was different from other people, that not everyone lost time, that everyone around him agreed he had done and said things he, and he alone, couldn’t recall, he assumed he was insane. He hid it.

Somehow he kept the secret.

It was in the spring of 1969, the Teacher recalled, when Billy was fourteen and in eighth grade, that Chalmer took him to the farm, out beyond the cornfield, handed him a shovel and told him to start digging...

Dr. Stella Karolin was later to describe this alleged event in her statement read into the court record: “[His stepfather] abused Billy sexually and threatened to bury him alive if he told his mother. He even buried the child, leaving a pipe over his face for air... Before he shoveled the dirt off the child, he urinated through the pipe onto the child’s face” (Newsweek, December 18, 1978).

... from that day, Danny feared the earth. He would never again lie in the grass, touch the ground or paint a landscape.

(5)

Several days later Billy went into his room and reached over to switch on his bedside lamp. Nothing happened. He clicked it again and again. Still nothing. He shuffled out to the kitchen, got a new bulb and came back to change it as he had seen his mother do. He got a shock that sent him back against the wall...

" Tommy” opened his eyes and looked around, not knowing what to expect. He saw the light bulb on the bed, picked it up, peered under the lampshade and started to screw it in. As he touched the metal collar he got a shock. Son of a bitch! What the hell was that? He pulled off the lampshade and looked into the hole. He touched it and felt the shock again. He sat there trying to puzzle it out. Where was this shit coming from? He followed the electric cord to where it plugged into the wall. He pulled out the plug and touched the collar again. Nothing. So the goddamned shock was coming from the wall. He stared into the two little holes, then jumped up and ran downstairs. He followed the wires from the ceiling to the fuse box, followed the cable from the fuse box outside the house, and stopped in amazement as he saw the lines leading to the telephone poles along the streets. So that’s what those goddamned things were for!

Tommy followed the poles to see where they led to. It was nearly dark when he found himself outside the building with the wire fence around it and the sign ohio power. Okay, he thought, so where do they get the stuff that lights the lights and shocks the shit out of you?

Back home he got out the phone book, looked up Ohio Power and wrote down the address. It was too dark now, but tomorrow morning he would go there and see where the power came from.

The next day Tommy went downtown to Ohio Power. He walked inside and stared, dumfounded. Just a lot of people sitting at desks, answering telephones and typing. A business office! Jesus Christ, struck out again! As he wandered along Main Street trying to figure out how he was going to find out where this junk came from, he passed the library sign in front of the Municipal Building.

Okay, he’d go look it up in the books. He went up to the second floor, searched the card catalog under " power, ” found the books and began to read. It astonished him to learn about dams, hydroelectric power and the burning of coal and other combustible fuels to create energy to work machinery and light the lights.

He read until dark. Then he wandered the streets of Lancaster, looking at all the lights that had been turned on, excited that now he knew where the power was coming from. He was going to learn all about those machines and everything that had to do with electricity. He stopped in front of a store window and looked at the display of electronic equipment. A crowd had gathered around the TV sets in the window, and they were watching the man in a spacesuit climb down a ladder.

“Can you believe it? ” someone said. “Seeing this all the way from the moon? ”

"... one giant step for mankind, ” the voice from the TV was saying.

Tommy looked up at the moon and then back at the TV screen. That was something else he had to learn about.

Then he saw a womans reflection in the window.

Dorothy said, “Billy, you’d better come on home now.”

He looked up at Billy’s pretty mother and started to tell her that his name was Tommy, but she put her hand on his shoulder and led him to the car.

“You got to stop this wandering around downtown, Billy. You got to be home before Chal gets back from work or you know what’ll happen.”

All the way back in the car Dorothy kept looking at him sideways, as if trying to size him up, but he kept quiet.

She gave Tommy something to eat, and then she said, “Why don’t you just go in and do some painting, Billy? You know that always settles you down. You look so edgy.”

He shrugged and went into the room where the art supplies were. With quick strokes, he painted a night scene of a road with telephone poles. When he was done, he stood back and looked at it. Pretty damned good for a beginner. The next morning he got up early and painted a landscape with the moon showing, even though it was a day scene.

(6)

Billy loved flowers and poetry and helping his mother around the house, but he knew that Chalmer called him “a sissy” and “a little queer.” So he stopped helping his mother and writing poetry. “Adalana” came to do them for him in secret.

One evening Chalmer settled down to watch a World War II movie in which a Gestapo interrogator beat his victim with a hose. When the movie was over, Chalmer went out into the yard and cut a four-foot length of garden hose, doubled it and wrapped the cut ends together with black tape for a handle. When he came inside he saw Billy washing the dishes.

Before she knew what was happening, Adalana felt a blow in the small of her back that knocked her to the floor

Chalmer hung the hose by the looped end on his bedroom door and went to bed.

Adalana learned that men were violent and hateful and never to be trusted. She wished Dorothy or one of the girls— Kathy or Challa—would hug her and kiss her and make the fear and the bad feelings go away. But she knew that would cause trouble, so she went to bed and cried herself to sleep.

Chalmer used that hose often, mostly on Billy. Dorothy recalled hanging her robe or nightgown over it on the back of the bedroom door, hoping that if Chalmer didn’t see it, he wouldn’t use it. Then one day, after he hadn’t used it for a long time, she threw it away. He never did know what had happened to it.

In addition to secretly playing with motors and electrical equipment, Tommy began to study methods of escape. He read about the great escape artists Houdini and Sylvester, and was disappointed to discover that some of their great escapes were tricks.

In later years Jimbo remembered his brother telling him to tie his hands tightly with a rope and then to leave. When Tommy was alone he would study the knots and figure out the easiest way to turn his wrists to make them mobile so that the ropes would slide. He practiced tying one wrist with a rope and then untying it with his hand behind his back.

After reading of African monkey traps—used to capture the animals when they reached through narrow slots for food and were then unable to pull their fists free because they wouldn’t let go—Tommy began to think about the structure of the human hand. He studied the encyclopedia pictures of bone structure, and it occurred to him that if the hand could be compressed smaller than the wrist, it could always get free. He measured his own hands and wrists and began a series of exercises, squeezing and conditioning his bones and joints. When he finally reached the point of being able to compress his hands smaller than his wrists, he knew that nothing could ever again keep him in harness or chains.

Tommy decided he also needed to know how to get out of locked rooms. When Billy’s mother was out and he was alone in the house, he got a screwdriver and unscrewed the lock plate of the door, studying the mechanism to see how it worked. He drew a picture of the inside of the lock and memorized the shapes. Whenever he saw a different lock, he would take it apart, study it and put it back together.

One day he wandered downtown into the shop of a locksmith. The old man let him look at the different kinds of locks to memorize how they worked. He even lent Tommy a book about magnetic-invoked tumblers, spinner-type tumblers and different kinds of vaults. Tommy studied hard, testing himself constantly. At the sporting goods store he saw handcuffs and decided that as soon as he had the money he would get a pair to learn how to unlock those as well.

One evening when Chalmer was particularly nasty at dinner, Tommy searched for a way he could hurt him without getting caught. He had an idea.

He got a file from the toolbox, took the cover off Chalmers electric rotary razor and carefully filed all three rotary blades dull. Then he put the cover back on and went out.

Next morning he stood outside the bathroom while Chalmer was shaving. He heard the click of the razor and then the shouts of pain as the dull blades yanked at the hairs instead of cutting them.

Chalmer raced out of the bathroom. “What’re you looking at, you stupid bastard? Don’t stand there like a goddamned moron! ”

Tommy shoved his hands into his pockets and walked off turning his head away so Chalmer wouldn’t see him smiling.

“Allen’s” first time out on the spot was when he tried to talk some neighborhood tough guys out of throwing him down into a construetion-site hole dug for the foundation of a building. He argued with them, using all of his con-man abilities, but it didn’t work. They tossed him down into the pit anyway and threw rocks at him. Well, he figured, no use in sticking around...

Danny heard the clunk of the rock hitting the ground in front of him. Then another one and another. He looked up to see the gang of boys at the top of the excavation tossing rocks at him. One hit him in the leg and another hit his side. Danny ran to the far end, going in circles, trying to find a way out. Finally, realizing the sides were too steep for him to climb, he sat down in the dirt and crossed his legs...

Tommy looked up when a rock hit him in the back. Quickly sizing up the situation, he realized an escape was called for. He had been practicing picking locks and untying ropes, but this was a different kind of escape. This needed strength...

Ragen got to his feet, pulled out his pocket knife and stormed up the incline toward the boys, flicking open the knife, looking from one of the bullies to the other; holding his anger in control, waiting to see which one would jump him. He had no hesitation about stabbing any of them. They had picked on someone a foot shorter than they were, but they had not expected him to confront them. The boys scattered and Ragen walked home.

Jimbo later recalled that when the parents of the boys complained that Billy had threatened their sons with a knife, Chalmer listened to their side of it, took Billy out back and beat him.

(7)

Dorothy knew that her younger son had changed and was acting strangely.

“Billy wasn’t Billy at times, ” she recalled later. “He was moody, he was off to himself. I would say something to him and he wouldn’t answer me, like he was far off and thinking about it, staring into space. He would go wandering downtown like he used to when he would sleepwalk. He’d do it from school. Sometimes if they caught him in school before he had a chance to wander off, they would keep him and call for me to come and get him. Sometimes he’d just leave and they’d call me. I’d go looking for him everywhere, find him wandering downtown and bring him home, and I’d say to him, ‘Okay, Billy, you go lay down.’ But that child didn’t even know which direction his bedroom was. I’d go in there and I’d think, ‘My God! ’ ‘Well, how do you feel? ’ I’d ask him when he’d wake up. He’d look real bewildered and say, ‘Did I stay home today? ’

“And I’d say, ‘No, Billy, you did not stay home today. Don’t you remember me coming after you? You were at school and Mr. Young called me and I come up to the school after you. Don’t remember coming home with me? ’

“He’d look dazed and nod and say, ‘Oh.’

“ ‘Don’t you remember? ’

“ ‘I guess I just wasn’t feeling well today.’

“They tried to tell me it was drug-related, ” Dorothy said, “but I knew it wasn’t. That boy never took drugs. He wouldn’t even take an aspirin. I’d have to fight him to take medicine. Sometimes he’d come home on his own, confused and in a trace. He wouldn’t talk to me until he had a nap. Then he’d come out and it would be my Billy again. I told them. I told everyone, Thaf boy needs help.’”

(8)

Arthur appeared in school occasionally to correct a teacher when they were studying world history, especially when the subject was England and the Colonies. He spent most of his time in the Lancaster Public Library, reading. There was more to be gained from books and firsthand experience than from these narrow-minded, provincial teachers.

The schoolteacher’s explanation of the Boston Tea Party made Arthur angry. He had read the truth in a Canadian book called The Raw Facts, which debunked the phony patriotic explanation for what had really been a group of drunken sailors. But when Arthur spoke, everyone laughed, and he walked out of the class, leaving the sound of giggling behind him. He went back to the library, where he knew the pretty librarian wouldn’t laugh at his accent.

Arthur knew very well there were others around, because as he checked the dates on the calendar, he knew something was wrong. According to everything he read and observed, other people didn’t sleep as long as he seemed to be sleeping.

He began to question people. “What did I do yesterday? ” he would ask Kathy or Jim or Challa or Dorothy. Their descriptions of his behavior would be completely strange to him. He would have to check it out by logical deduction.

One day as he was about to sleep, he felt someone else’s presence in his mind and he forced himself to stay awake. “Who are you? ” he asked. “I demand to know who you are.” He heard the voice answer, “Well, who in the hell are you? ” “My name’s Arthur. Who are you? ”

Tommy.

“What are you doing here, Tommy? ”

“What are you doin’ here? ”

The questiining went back and forth in his mind.

“How did you get here? ” Arthur asked.

“I dunno, d’you? ”

“No, but I’ve bloody well got to find out.”

“How? ”

“We must be logical about it. I have an idea. Lets you and I keep track of the time we’re awake, to see if that accounts for all the hours of the day.”

“Hey, that’s a good idea.”

Arthur said, “Make a mark inside the closet door for every hour you can account for. I’ll do the same thing. We’ll tally it up and check it with the calendar to see if all the time is accounted for.”

It wasn’t.

There had to be others.

Arthur spent every conscious moment working out the puzzle of the missing time and searching for other people who seemed too be sharing his mind and body. After meeting Tommy, one by one he discovered all the others, a total of twenty-three, including himself and the one the outside people referred to as Billy or Bill. He had learned through logical deduction who they were, how they behaved and the things they did.

Only the child called Christene seemed to have been aware, before Arthur, of the existence of the others. She could, he learned, experience what went on in their minds when they were conscious. Arthur wondered if that was a skill that could be developed.

He brought up the subject to the one called Allen, the manipulator who was always there to fast-talk himself out of a tight situation.

“Allen, next time you are holding the consciousness, I want you to think real hard and tell me everything that’s going on around you.”

Allen agreed to try it, and the next time he found he was out, he told Arthur everything he saw. Arthur visualized it until it came into focus, and then, with a tremendous effort, he was able to see it through Allen’s eyes. He discovered, however, that it worked only when he paid attention and when he was awake, even though not out in the consciousness. He had achieved his first intellectual triumph of mind over matter.

Arthur realized that because of his knowledge, he had become responsible for a large, diverse family. They were all involved with the same body, and something had to be done to create order out of what was proving to be a chaotic situation.

Since he was the only one capable of handling the task unemotionally, he would put his mind to it and come up with something that would be fair, workable and—above all—logical.

The kids at school teased Billy when he wandered around the halls in a daze. They saw him talking to himself behaving at times like a little girl, and they picked on him. One cold afternoon during recess, some of the boys started taunting him in the schoolyard.

Someone threw a rock at him, hitting him in the side. At first he didn’t know what had happened, but he knew he wasn’t permitted to show anger or Chalmer would punish him.

Ragen turned and glared at the laughing boys. Another boy picked up a rock and threw it, but Ragen caught it and whipped it back swiftly hitting the boy in the head.

Astonished, the boys backed off as Ragen pulled a switchblade out of his pocket and approached them. They fled. Ragen stood looking around, trying to understand where he was and how he had come to be there. He closed the knife, put it into his pocket and walked off He had no idea what was going on.

But Arthur observed him, his swiftness, his angei; and he deduced why Ragen was there. He realized that Ragens sudden emotional outbursts would have to be dealt with. But it would be necessary to study and understand him before he introduced himself. What surprised him most of all was that Ragen was thinking in a Slavic accent. Arthur felt the Slavs had been the first barbarians. In dealing with Ragen, he was dealing with a barbarian. Dangerous, but the kind of person who might prove necessary in times of danger, a power to be harnessed. Arthur would bide his time and approach him when he felt it was right.

Several weeks later “Kevin” joined some tough boys in a dirt-clod fight against kids from another neighborhood. The battleground was a mound of dirt behind a big pit where a housing development was under construction. Kevin was feeling rough and tough, tossing the clods, laughing as he missed, watching them explode like dirt bombs.

Then he heard a strange voice from somewhere beside him say, “Lowah. Trow dem lowah! ”

He stopped and looked around, but no one was close by. Then he heard it again: “Lowah... lowah... trow dem tings lowah.” It was a voice like the Brooklyn soldiers in the war movie he had seen on TV. “Y’ should trow dem damned doit clods lowah! ”

Kevin was baffled. He stopped throwing and sat down on the dirt pile, to figure out who was talking to him.

“Where are you? ” Kevin asked.

“Where are you? ” echoed the voice.

“I’m standing on the dirt behind the pit.”

“Yeah? Me too.”

“Whats your name? ” Kevin asked.

“Philip. Whats yours? ”

“Kevin.”

“Dat’s a funny name.”

“Yeah? I’d bust you if I could see you.”

“Where ya live? ” Philip asked.

“On Spring Street. Where you from? ”

“I’m from Brooklyn, Noo Yawk, but now I live on Spring Street too.”

“It’s 933 Spring. A white house. Owned by some guy named Chalmer Milligan, ” Kevin said. “He calls me Billy.”

“Cheeze, dat’s where I live. I know da same guy. He calls me Billy too. I ain’t never seen you dere.”

“I ain’t never seen you there, either, ” said Kevin.

“Well, shit, pal! ” Philip said. “Lets go bust out some windows at the school.”

“That's cool, ” Kevin said, and they ran down to the school and broke a dozen windows.

Arthur listened and watched and decided that those two were definitely criminal types who could prove to be a very serious problem indeed.

Ragen knew some of the other people who shared his body. He knew Billy, whom he had known from the beginning of his own consciousness; David, who accepted the pain; Danny, who lived in constant fear; and three-year-old Christene, whom he adored. But he knew there were others as well—many others he hadn’t met. The voices and the things that happened couldn’t be explained by just the five of them.

Ragen knew his last name was Vadascovinich, that his homeland was Yugoslavia and that his reason for existence was to survive and to use any means to protect the others—especially the children. He was aware of his great strength and his ability to sense danger as a spider feels the tingling presence of an intruder on his web. He was able to absorb all the others’ fear and transform it into action. He vowed to train himself, perfect his body, study the martial arts. But that was not enough in this hostile world.

He went downtown to the local sporting-goods store and bought a throwing knife. Then he went out to the woods and practiced pulling it quickly from his boot and tossing it into a tree. When it got too dark to see, he headed for home. Never again, he decided, as he slipped the knife back into his boot, would he be without a weapon.

On the way home, he heard a strange voice with a British accent. He turned quickly, bending down and whipping out the knife, but there was no one there.

“I’m in your head, Ragen Vadascovinich. We are sharing the same body.”

Arthur talked to him as they walked, explaining what he had discovered about the other people inside.

“You are really in my head? ” Ragen asked.

“That’s right.”

“And you know vat I am doing? ”

“I’ve been observing you lately. I think you’re very good with a knife, but you should not limit yourself to one weapon. In addition to the skills of the martial arts, you should learn about guns and bombs as well.”

“I am no good vit explosives. I don’t understand about all those vires and connections.”

“Tommy could specialize in that. The lad is good with electronics and mechanical things.”

“Who is Tommy? ”

“One of these days I’ll introduce you. If we are to survive in this world, we’ll have to bring some order out of this chaos.”

“Vat you mean ‘chaos’? ”

“When Billy wanders around, and one person after another switches in front of people, starting things and not finishing them, getting into scrapes that the others have to do mental handsprings to get out of, I call that chaos. There’s got to be a way to control things.”

“I don’t like too much control, ” Ragen said.

“The important thing, ” said Arthur, “is to learn to control events and people so that we can survive. That I place as the highest priority.”

“And next to highest? ”

“Self-improvement.”

“I agree, ” Ragen said.

“Let me tell you about a book I read that explains how its possible to control one’s adrenaline, to channel it for maximum power.”

Ragen listened as Arthur described his readings in biology, especially his interest in the idea of harnessing fear and transforming it into energy by adrenaline and thyroid secretion. Ragen found himself annoyed at Arthurs assumption of superiority, but he could not deny that the Englishman knew a great deal he himself had never heard of.

“You play chess? ” Arthur asked.

“Of course, ” said Ragen.

“All right then, pawn to king four.”

Ragen thought a moment and answered: “Knight to queens bishop three. ” ^x

Arthur visualized the board and said, “Ah, an Indian defense. Very good.”

Arthur won the game, and every chess game they played after that. Ragen had to admit that when it came to mental concentration, Arthur was his superior. He consoled himself with the knowledge that Arthur couldn’t fight if his life depended on it.

“We will need you to protect us, ” Arthur said.

“How you can read my mind? ”

“A simple technique. You should be able to pick it up someday yourself.”

“Does Billy know about us? ”

“No. He hears voices from time to time and he sees visions, but he has no notion we exist.”.

“Should he not be told? ”

“I don’t think so. I believe it would drive him insane.”